suphew

I would leave glueing the whole thing, for a while at least, Mine isn't glued and was so glad because I had put the 'T' upside down which screwed up the flow and had to much length above the 'T' which put the water level in the over flow too low. I was able to adjust it all because I hadn't glued it, otherwise I would have had to either live with it or replace all the bits. I only risk you take by not glueing is if you have a power cut, you will dump the normal amount down into your sump but with the durso leaking you will slowly get more water, if you overflow box is sealed well it wont be a problem.

Is that a boot print in the bottom right corner? Maybe there to give a jurasic (sp) feel??? lol It looks a bit like the water level is now at the base of that post?? If thats the case it would indicate a good place to start looking for the leak, the pond wont of course drain below the leak so maybe you need to let it sit for a day or two once the rain stops to see how far the water level drops.

from the durso site. looks like you MIGHT be ok running the same size because of the tank size, but I could see any point risking it and have to buy a whole bunch more plumbing "If you have a 1 inch bulkhead the standpipe needs to be larger than the bulkhead to work correctly. I get a lot of e-mail questions on why this is. Honestly, I'm not sure. Typically if you use 1 inch PVC pipe on a 1 inch bulkhead you get poor results. (Some exceptions with smaller low flow tanks.) Take my word on it and use 1¼ inch PVC pipe. For very large tanks with large return pumps however, there does not seem to be any need to oversize the standpipe for larger bulkheads such as 1.5 inch. Larger bulkheads can use PVC pipe & fittings that match the size of the bulkhead. (I consider tanks in the 350 gallon and up good candidates for 1.5 inch bulkheads). "

Not suppost to be a good idea to mix Discus and Angles. The Angles carry parisites etc that dont affect them but will cause problems with the Discus.

No you need to go bigger with the durso for it to work. Mine looked huge too, didn't think it would ever fit in the tank, but you will need it if you ever run that pump in anger. Welcome to the joys of plumbing, ask Chimera how much he has spent on plumbing :lol:

I would suggest putting the light onto a timer, even if it just goes on for an hour or two at the time you want to look at them. When fish get a scare i.e. light suddently go on at random and people are moving round, they will hide and lose their colours.

I like the idea of setting up a web cam, the disadvantage is you wouldn't get notifications so not really 25/7 monitoring, but the big advantage is being able to watch my tank at work! Surely it wouldn't be hard to make a power monitor that connects to your PC and get the PC to SMS?

I use 32mm up and 40mm down. Yeah the connection is a pain, I run mine in the sump so am not that worried, basically I heated up some clear flexible tube and jammed it over th clippy thing, I then got a 32mm fitting and jammed that in the other end. I used the dremal on the 32 fitting to put some groves in so the tubing is less likely to slip off.

Yep the bulkhead and tap are 40mm, from memory the durso itself is made from 50mm down pipe, this is because it is in the tank so doesn't need to not leak and 50mm pressure fittings cost heaps. The lower half of the return is all 40mm pressure pipe.

Hi poppy, things do sometimes get pretty heated in here but most of us know each other pretty well (if sometimes only online) and are mostly all friends. There are alot of people that post here asking similar questions then just disappear when they start to get an idea of what is involved (cost and time wise) so some of the replies can seem to be a bit short and grumpy, this isn't the usually the case mostly we are just busy and tire of answering similar questions. I don't know of anyone up your way with Marine, but there are a few of us in Wellington and we generaly love to show off our tanks, you just need to post asking or PM some of us. You will learn more in 15 minutes of looking at someones setup than a month of asking questions online.

Im not even going to lower myself to your level, any one who reads this post wil be able to decide for themselves who is being lame.

you implied it and when IRA made the following statement you made no comment. I give up now, you have reduced this to trying to pick little holes that are not relevent. "I'd thought of the calcium reactor idea. They're pretty well sealed, Chim. I'm not sure they'd handle massive amounts of pressure, but I think they should probably hold maybe 10 PSI."

My return pump is a UP7 so I guess I'm getting 6000-7000 or more LPH down my over flow, I'm using 40mm pressure pipe for my return (all my other plumbing, loops etc are 32mm) think the tank hole was 50mm. When I dremaled out the holes for the 32mm fittings I only did enough to be able to get the fitting through, I don't think you need to have the extra space, the seal is made with the flats of the bulkheads don't know if silicon in the hole sides makes much difference (can't hurt of course). How big is your sump? I'm using a standard sized 4 foot at the moment and think it is too small for the amount of water flowing through it, it's like a river in there and I can't get rid of the micro bubbles.

Chim

Cheers Kermit. I have a larger UPS (3000KVA) waiting to go in but have been holding off till I could find out the answer to this.

Again you have tried to change things to make yourself correct. This posting was about turning a fluid reactor into a cal reactor, you stated that it might not work because the container would be under pressure and therefore leak, now you are talking about the water moving over the media, this is quite true if you are looking at a single point on the media, and on the other side of peice of media will be a low pressure because as I'm sure you know "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction" so this isn't actually very relivent to the out come anyway, again because it is a balanced closed loop. But this has nothing to do with putting the container under pressure which is WHAT THIS POST IS ABOUT. The reason for talking about gases was to make a single point in terms you could understand, i.e. that movement is not a requirement of and has nothing to do with movement.

I used 32mm pressure plumbing (nb: 32mm non-pressure plumbing is a different size so make sure you know what you are using) I had 40mm holes drilled and they were just a bit too small, fixed with a dremal, so if I was you would go 42-45mm, it doesn't matter that much cause as Chim says the silicon will fill any small gaps.

How can I be off topic I was responding to your post directly before mine, I even quoted it??? I stopped responding ages ago because it was getting off topic and was pointless because you were making up crazy idea's with no base in fact to try and make yourself correct, but I just couldn't let that last one go, my mistake I guess. pressure has nothing to do with motion (unless your talking at a molecular level which we aren't). Take a spray can, I think you would agree that inside it is under pressure?? So where is all this motion you are talking about?? Is there only pressure in there when you move the can?? Maybe the pressure magically arrives when the motion of your finger pushes open the valve?? What about your car tyre is there only pressure in there when the wheels are turning??

This is way I have given up trying to explain things, not because you guys are right. Motion and pressure are two completely different things, there are no "forms of pressure" in this context. The amount of force acting (pushing) on a unit of area. Usually expressed in pounds per square inch (psi). www.wmwd.com/terminology.htm

I run carbon and Zeolite in mine, have also run phosphate resin but have that in a fluidizer now. Dump the bioballs etc they aren't helping your setup at all.

Interesting, I have tried to look into this a couple of time's, have even spoken to the engineers that service the UPS's I have a work and been unable to get an answer. The problem is that I'm not sure if the earth in the output side of the UPS is connected to the true earth. If not then the UPS would operate similar to an isolating transformer making the RCD redundant because a) your protected anyway and b) the RCD measures the difference between the common and earth, if the earth only goes to the UPS then you would have to have a problem between the device and the earth of the UPS for it to trip out not the real earth so it would be unlikely to work.

I have had two different experiances with LFS's that to me really just show if the owers are in the business for the hobby or for the money. I'm not says being in the business for either reason is right or wrong but it has changed which shop I spend my money at. I purchased a Chevron tang from a LFS, not that it made any difference to my purchasing but the owner told me that it had been in another customers tank for 6 months, he had just returned it because it had cleaned all the algae from his tank and was starting to get skinny. The LFS owner had given him a store credit for the wholesale price. When I still kept fresh water fish I took a bag of bristle nose plec's that I had been breeding to a LFS, even through I had pre arranged this with the shop they were pretty unhappy about taking the fish and gave me 1/15 of what they were selling them for. All I actually wanted for them was fish food and had to make up the small difference in cost cause they wouldn't let me off the 1 or 2 dollar difference. The reason they were unhappy about taking the fish "because of possible diseases in my tank" which is fair, accept that this is the same shop that have stated they don't remove dead fish from there tanks "because the staff are too busy" ---> translation "we pay staff to sell not look after our live stock". Can you guess which shop gets my business now?? As an aside I happen to know the owner of the second shops drives a new merc, good on him. The owner of the first shop, I don't know what he drives but it isn't a new merc, however I have never seen him not smiling enjoying his life, on the surface at least seems to doing his dream job and life style

1) the best way to reduce the air coming out is to add a gate valve to your air line (same device you would use if you wanted to connect two air stones to one air line) and just bleed some air out of one of the gates. This will reduce the back pressure on your air pump. Next option would be to add extra air stones. My proffered option, turn the noisy thing off and remove it. They don't do anything much in the tank unless they are running a filter (like an under gravel filter) 2) First place to look if you have problems growing plants are your lights, but Java fern is a really good low light choice, Java moss is good to, Indian fern grows really fast, Anubia (sp?) is tough to so good with cichlids. (all these will do ok in lowish light). 3) That nitrate is pretty high and it shouldn't change so much with just missing a water change. Need to know how big you tank is and how long it's been setup before making too many suggestions. By the way to you vacuum you gravel when you change the water?? There could be dead stuff building up in there causing your problems.

You can use a weak bleach solution to clean stuff (including plants if you just give them a quick dip) two things to know, first make sure you use just pure bleach (the budget stuff is normally the best) dont use bleach with additives like smell etc. And secondly rinse the stuff afterwards until you cant smell the bleach anymore. I wouldn't bother cleaning your gravel with bleach because it will be too much of a hassle to rinse off afterwards.

Yes